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Breakfast

Omelet

A dish of beaten eggs combined with milk, butter and flour, cooked in a skillet and folded.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Omelet

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix the flour with half the milk.

  2. Melt the butter in the other half of the milk.

  3. Beat the eggs separately.

  4. Combine the beaten yolks with the milk, butter, and flour.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook in a skillet until set.

  2. Fold and serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, with whipped whites adding lightness and volume.
Milk
Adds moisture and makes the batter tender as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives it structure as it sets.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Beaten whites trap air that gives the omelet its lift. Stirring or folding them vigorously knocks out that air, so the result turns dense instead of light.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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